


Bane of the Doctor - Part 12: The Wrath of River Song

by RodimusDoctor



Series: Bane of the Doctor [13]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Multiple Doctors (Doctor Who), Science Fiction, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-31
Updated: 2014-07-31
Packaged: 2018-02-11 05:18:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2055099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RodimusDoctor/pseuds/RodimusDoctor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While the 11th Doctor and the Scarecrow look for a way to escape with the unconscious 10th Doctor, River Song's light construct introduces Dirge Manson to a world of pain. Both their vortex manipulators end up damaged, and their fight bounces around in time within the Seventh Transept/Delirium Archive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bane of the Doctor - Part 12: The Wrath of River Song

She fights like a berserker hell-bent on revenge, yet with a skill and grace of a Raston Robot. I find myself retreating down the corridor toward my command chamber, my own moves purely defensive.

I cannot hurt her. Given the ferocity of her attack coupled with my astonishment at seeing her again, indeed at all, it’s no wonder I haven’t worked out what she is before now. She didn’t appear out of nowhere; she burst from the Doctor’s jacket pocket, still wearing the same outfit she wore when I showed her as a hologram to my father. It seems she’s managed to upgrade herself into a solid-light projection, like the current version of Madame Kovarian. Somehow she uploaded her entire personality into my holoprojector when I was recording her back in the Library. This River Song seeks vengeance not only for the Doctor, but for her digital husband as well.

And she may yet succeed. I’ve dismissed most of my ogrons now that the breaking of the Doctor is complete, and those that remain have been incapacitated by Dr. Crane’s gas. I am on my own.

I need a weapon.

I dodge a blow and land a kick in River’s stomach. I hope to buy myself enough time to reach the gibbering ogron at the end of the next corridor. If I can grab the blaster on his belt...

River tackles me from behind and we go down. I land on my vortex manipulator, and the impact triggers it. For a moment we are surrounded by the time vortex. When I roll on my side and shove River off of me, we’ve already landed in a different time zone.

And we've knocked over some priceless artifacts. Even as the display cases shatter, I hear alarms sounding. We are in the Delirium Gallery, surrounded by frightened patrons.

Security will be here in moments. Nevertheless, River and I continue our fight. She lands a kick that sends me sprawling over the broken glass; I snatch up a large piece and slash her midsection. The move surprises her but does no damage; she is, after all, hard light. But if I can stab deep enough, I might damage the holoprojector within her. I duck under River’s fist and pick up another glass shard, then I lunge forward with my left and slash while keeping my right ready to stab. Instead, it is the slash that makes a shallow, useless cut across her chest, and she’s ready for my secondary attack. River grabs my right wrist in both hands, smacking my vortex manipulator as she does so...

...and we are in the vortex again. River doesn’t loosen her grip on my wrist, but she is distracted enough by our shift in locale that I get my left hand past her defence. I bury the glass dagger deep into her chest, right between her breasts, where her heart should be. But not, apparently, where the projector is.

We land, and are surrounded by Headless Monks. Another time zone, possibly before I was born. The Monks don’t know either of us; they are on their feet in an instant with their swords drawn.  
In that instant, it occurs to me that perhaps River and I should ally ourselves briefly in order to survive. The thought does not occur to her; River slams her boot into my groin and, still holding my right arm, pulls me off-balance and hurls me at the nearest Monk.

When she releases my arm, and her hands break contact with my manipulator, I am suddenly back in the time vortex once more. It seems the device is overly sensitive at the moment; contact with it (or lack thereof) seems to trigger a random time jump.

It also seems that maintaining contact is necessary to make the jump. I am now among the skulls of the Seventh Transept, facing a shelf of boxed heads. The River Song light construct is nowhere to be seen; I have left her behind in the past, surrounded my Headless Monks!

I spare a moment to pity those Monks. They have no idea with whom they are dealing. I hadn’t, either; I underestimated her, and it nearly cost me my life. She is hopefully contained, stranded in the past, but I wouldn’t bet my life on it.

Time to return to my base of operations. I walk to the shelf and clear some space, tossing aside an unmarked head box with a blood-caked gash on its back. It would seem the head within it was stabbed, likely by a Monk sword. The name plaque is missing, so the identity of the victim is a mystery – one I need not concern myself with. Carefully, I remove my vortex manipulator from my wrist and attempt to repair it, trying not to trigger it in the process.

 

“I trust you have another exit strategy,” the Scarecrow said as he and the Doctor left Doctor Crane’s lab and headed back in the direction of the brainwashing room. They carried the 10th Doctor between them, the Scarecrow holding him by his arms and the 11th Doctor his feet.

“Not really, no,” the 11th Doctor replied. “Not one for exit strategies, me. I much prefer escape plans.”

“It’s the same thing!” the Scarecrow snapped.

“I know,” the Doctor said. “But escape plan sounds so much more exciting!”

They’d expected to find the 8th Doctor’s Tardis waiting for them in the lab. Instead they did not; it seemed the younger Doctor and Clara Oswald had gone off on an adventure to who knew when or where, leaving the 11th Doctor without his first choice for an escape.

They had found an ogron; Crane’s gas had quickly put him out of action.

“What’s your backup escape plan, then?” the Scarecrow demanded.

“Not entirely sure,” the Doctor wedged his younger self’s ankles against his body with his forearm and fished his sonic screwdriver out of his jacket. “But there are five distinct possibilities branching out from this moment. Well, six, if you count Manson returning and re-capturing us. Otherwise, we escape with my friend River, who has a vortex manipulator attached to her holoprojector.

“Or,” he waved the sonic around, then bent to look at the readings, “my even younger self returns with Clara in his Tardis and takes us away from here.

“Or,” he shuffled to the right and buzzed an unremarkable bit of wall, “we locate one of the time anomalies and hop through it, and hope it takes us to a more favourable point in this structure’s timeline.” A door opened in the wall, revealing an elevator. “Or, we locate the hangar where Manson or the ogrons have hopefully stashed a convenient space ship. Those last two possibilities are the only ones we have any control over, so until one of the others turns up, I suggest we look for the hangar while we head toward the nearest anomaly. There’s one beneath us somewhere, and this elevator goes down.”

“You said five possibilities,” the Scarecrow said, following the Doctor into the elevator. “What’s the fifth?”

“Something completely unexpected happens,” the Doctor pressed the elevator’s only button, “and a new set of possibilities present themselves. That’s the one I’m hoping for. They’re my favourites.”

The doors closed, and the Doctors and the Scarecrow went down.

 

River Song fought fiercely, a Headless Monk sword in each hand. She’d dropped four Monks already, but more kept coming. The Attack Prayer echoed off the walls all around her.

Dirge Manson had managed to abandon her. But if he thought he’d escaped her vengeance, he was deluding himself. River had her own vortex manipulator, and could escape any time she wanted. The only reason she continued to fight with the Monks was so that her manipulator could copy Dirge’s trajectory and send her where he’d gone. And besides, she was in the mood for a good fight.

This proved her undoing. While she parried with one sword and slashed through a Monk’s robe with the other, a third Monk stabbed her in the back. The blade grazed her manipulator and overloaded it, sending River and the Monk into the vortex.

They exited almost immediately, still in the same room, no more than ten minutes later. They were surrounded by a circle of praying monks, presumably the same group they’d just left.  
River swiveled and kicked the attacking Monk in the chest. He flew backward and landed between two praying Monks, but his sword remained buried in River’s back. The movement of her kicking caused the sword tip to shift a fraction, causing more damage to the vortex manipulator. River vanished into the timestream once more.

The time-displaced Monk rose to his feet, only to be flattened by a large chunk of masonry that fell from the wall above and behind him. He might have recovered, but then the Doctor leapt from the hole in the wall where the masonry had been and landed upon it, finishing him off.

 

River Song burst from the space/time vortex directly above a large steel crate filled with ravenous skulls. She fell in and they were upon her like piranhas. They couldn’t hurt her light matrix, but the experience was so horrific that River couldn’t contain a moan of panic. The sword in her back was jostled once more, this time by an overexcited skull that sliced itself in two upon it. River fell back into the vortex, along with the thirteen skulls that had attached themselves to her.

“Problem, Private Manson?”

“No, Captain,” the private said. “I thought I heard... it’s nothing.”

“Very well,” Captain Manson said. “Proceed with the tour.”

 

River went through numerous eras in the Seventh Transept/Delirium Archive’s timeline. A second here and a second then. Her light matrix became corrupted, and at one point lost its solidity. The sword fell from her now-insubstantial body, and she was gone before it clattered on the floor.

In a panic, River tried to shut her vortex manipulator off. She’d linked it to her holoprojector, so it should not have been a problem.

Only it was. The manipulator kept re-activating every time she tried to cut the power. It did slow down her time-hops, though – she stayed in each new era for six and a half seconds. She appeared in a bathroom stall and saw the Doctor cornered by children, one of whom was a young Dirge Manson. Then she was in the vast meditation chamber, where four ogrons lowered a figure wrapped in a sensory deprivation suit to the floor. And then she was in a hanger, watching Dirge Manson step out of one of the Silence’s time capsules with Doctor Crane close behind.

A medical centre, where the 10th Doctor lay in a healing tank, supervised by a siren-like hologram.

The meditation chamber again. Six ogrons administered punishment to the man in the deprivation suit.

The Archive museum, where the curator supervised the addition of the Byzantium’s flight recorder.

The Seventh Transept. She witnessed the beheading of Private Manson while Madame Kovarian watched with satisfaction.

The Archive’s distant future, amongst the display cases, exactly the spot where the 11th Doctor had disappeared. She looked to her right and saw the fez that covered her holomatter projector, still waiting for the Doctor’s visit. In fact, was that not the familiar wheezing of the Tardis she could hear in the distance?

Then there was another familiar sound – a shrill buzzing. River turned around to see a sonic screwdriver pointed at her, held by a stranger in a dark cloak and hood.

“I’ve stabilized the manipulator, and frozen the settings on your holoprojector,” the stranger said. “But the manipulator is still damaged and leaking. Two more trips and there’s a danger of you causing a rift in the fabric of spacetime.”

“Better make only one more trip, then,” River said. “I haven’t seen this one,” she reached for his face, but her fingers phased through his cheek and chin. “Wait a minute, you’ve left me insubstantial!”

“Best I could do,” the stranger said. “Now program these co-ordinates into the manipulator. It’s time for you to do what must be done.”

“All right,” River entered the numbers he gave her. “I never thought you would help me with a murder.”

“I’m not,” he said. “I’m hoping you won’t be that merciful.” He looked to the right, and squinted. “Time to go. I’m coming.” He turned and walked toward the shadows.

“Wait!” River whispered. “I’m not solid! What the hell can I do in this state?”

“What you must,” the stranger told her. “Off you go.” And then the shadows swallowed him up.

River had many questions about the hooded stranger who’d conveniently been waiting for her at exactly the right time. Who was he? He had a sonic screwdriver – was he a future incarnation of the Doctor?

It didn’t matter. He was gone, and another incarnation of the Doctor was about to arrive. River activated the manipulator and vanished.

 

I strap the vortex manipulator back onto my wrist and stand up, ready. I’ll likely exhaust the power cells getting back, but that is of little consequence. My work is almost done.

It is time to end this.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like my writing, please consider buying my ebook, The Five Demons You Meet In Hell, available here:  
> https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/367849


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